I made friends with three Dutch guys on my bus, who had done the border crossing previously. If I hadn't I'm not sure I'd have had a clue where to go and I what order.
After a long queue at departures, we had to walk through the town to get stamped into Thailand and fill our arrival forms. Then onto another queue to get our Thai Visa. Luckily the whole process only took an hour and a half.
We had been given white stickers in return for our bus tickets and were told that another bus would be waiting for us on the other side to take us to Bangkok. I'd heard stories about people going through and then finding out there was no bus. We found the rest of our buses passengers waiting in a sheltered marque area. They'd asked some semi official looking thai man who had said we were to wait here. After an hour of waiting I was beginning to feel skeptical but then a guy showed up looking for us, the people with white stickers. I thought we might finally be leaving, but he said we were waiting for more people. We waited another hour and a half and then he got a phone call and told us to follow him. We walked to a travel agent where we found the people we'd been waiting for.
We got on another minibus, this one was rammed to capacity. Our backpacks were piled into a dangerous tower on one of the seats beside two terrified looking Chinese girls. I somehow ended up having to sit in the front, between the driver and a Cambodian man, who refused to give up his soft window seat, I had to sit on a hard plastic storage compartment, between the two men, for the 5 hour trip. I tried to force myself to sleep because being in the front seat, I could see every terrifying, erratic overtaking manoeuvre and zig zagging between lanes. And had no seatbelt. We finally made it to Bangkok at 5.30pm. I was going to meet a girl I'd first met in Nang Thrang, in Vietnam. Steffi, had made a reservation in her hostel, on the famous backpacking district of Khoa San road. The driver had pointed me in the direction when I got off the bus, but when I couldn't find the street sign I took out my lonely planet for a map. A tuk tuk driver approached me. 'tuk tuk? Where you going?'
'No, I'm just looking for Khoa San Road, can you tell me which direction?'
He started leading me in the direction I had suspected it was. He began making conversation, where was I from etc.
'where you go after Bangkok?'
'I'm going to Chiang Mai tomorrow'
'ohh, how you getting there?'
'I'm going to get the train'
'have you got you're ticket?'
'Not yet'
The tuk tuk driver suddenly changed direction, back the way we came.
'Actually, Khoa San Road is this way!' he said.
I was completely skeptical.
'I'm pretty sure it's not, my driver said it was this way.' I said and started to consult with my map.
'No, no, is this way. You're map is wrong, you're map is not to scale!'
I laughed out loud at how stupid this man must think I am and then decided to ignore his attempts to help me.
'Is this way, we go to travel agent on the way, you get your train ticket!'
I threw him a dirty look and told him if he wasn't going to help me to leave me alone.
This is one example of many of my experience with tuk-tuk drivers, street sellers and anyone in general on the streets around the Khoa San Road area of Bangkok. Unlike the friendly Khmers, it seemed that anyone in Bangkok that started a conversation with me would ultimately try and sell me something, take me somewhere I didn't want to go, scam me, or try and rip me off.
Khoa San Road has been the main backpacking area in Bangkok for years. Maybe too many years. It is completely devoid of any thai culture. I found it tacky and unappealing, it's full of loud, glaring neon bars and nightclubs, as well as overpriced street food stalls, and sleazy men trying to sell you 'ping pong' shows, or drugs. In case you haven't guessed, I didn't much like it there. Our hostel was amazingly shit as well. Its expensive (for Thailand) to stay on Khoa San Road. And even though I was paying more than usual, the place was grim, tiled walls in the bedrooms, rude staff and cockroaches.
All the same I was determined for a night out to make up for the previous days mess. Me and Steff got ready, all the while I was gradually feeling more ill. I was trying to ignore it. And then, as we walked down the steps of the hostel, I stopped 'Im going to be sick' and I ran up to the bathroom to puke.
Until this point it had occurred to me that I had been remarkably lucky when it came to being ill on this trip. With any trip to far far away lands, with a completely different diet, climate, germs and diseases, you're bound to pick up something, despite all the vaccinations and medications. I had thought I was relatively home free, I had not expected Thailand to be the place where I got sick, it was the most touristic after all. I had no idea what was in store for me.
This time, I was convinced it was probably some mild food poisoning from a street food stall at the border. I returned sheepishly to Steff, still feeling dizzy and light headed. We made our way to a travel agents nearby with the intention of booking our night train to Chiang Mai for the following night. But it was no good. We were in there about five minutes before a cold sweat covered my body. I couldn't concentrate on anything the man was saying.
'Do you have a bathroom?'
'No, there's a hotel down that alley, you can go there.'
I ran out, but didn't make it to the hotel and settled for a puke in the alley. Classy. I gave up on the night. There would be no dinner, no drinking. I went back to our dingy hostel, the only saving grace being that it had air con. The blaring music of one of the many night clubs on Khoa San Road filled our bedroom until 5am. You could hear ever lyric and every note perfectly clearly. I did however manage to sleep through most of it.
The next day I felt much better and we got the hell out of hot, polluted Bangkok and got our 14hour sleeper train to Northern Thailand to the beautiful Chiang Mai. I wish all transport was like sleeper trains. We were only in 2nd class but it felt like luxury. The beds start out as seats, until around 8 or 9pm when our camp little host came around and quickly transformed the seats, into two full sized,bunk bed style beds. They were amazing and comfortable. They each had Clinical blue curtains to block out the outside light and aisle.
The train also had a bar which was the funniest train experience I've ever had. You wander through the trains carriages until eventually you open the door to one and are greeted with blaring thai dance music, a dimly lit carriage, decorated with fairy lights. Your options are beer or beer. It's full of tables and chairs and friendly dancing staff. It was also full of drunk middle aged French who hung dangerously between carriages every now and then, opening the outside door to have cigarettes. It was all a far way from Iranrod Eireann.
You're amazing
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